Oakland's non-profit video game museum is back, and thriving | Hacker News Reader

Oakland's non-profit video game museum is back, and thriving

sfstandard.com

197 pointsVonGuard21 comments

If you are curious about old arcade games and live around, or passing through Chicago, I highly recommend Galloping Ghost Arcade in Brookfield. Almost 900 arcade games going back to the 70s. They even have a coin-op Pong. All of the games are set to free play and it’s $25 to play all day long. They had every arcade game I could remember from my childhood at Aladdin’s Castle in Lincoln Mall. Even the really weird hologram Time Traveler game.

https://www.gallopingghostarcade.com/

That looks cool! I also randomly found and enjoyed the Computer Games Museum in Berlin:

https://www.computerspielemuseum.de/

Great place. I spent at least five of my kids' birthdays there, but highly recommended for adults, too.

An absolutely incredible place. Just wish they could keep up with repairs.

The MADE needs volunteers! Email info@themade.org to find out how to volunteer and help us restore old systems, teach kids to code, or just help people play games!

I just took my 9 year old to MADE while visiting SF and we had a great time. He loved trying out the older systems and we spent at least 5 hours there!

Security around Oakland has been terrible in the past few years. Hope this museum stays around without it getting robbed.

I used to live on that street, that's an awesome location. Lots of conferences come through the Marriott there and it's a nice little street that gets a good amount of foot traffic.

9th between Washington and Broadway is such a great little block. The only problem is I get so mad when I think about how that whole area was like that before 1960, when they bulldozed 9000 cute little buildings to put in the freeway.

I took a trip to San Francisco in March 2020, and this was on my list of places to visit. Kind of fell by the wayside as COVID more-or-less started in the US a couple days into the trip.

It was a really odd time, almost everything was still open, yet downtown SF very quickly became a ghost town. My wife and I joke now that the best time to visit a big city is at the start of a pandemic.

I’ll have to make it back to see the museum sometime.

It’s a little more corporate than the museum in the article, but in Sheffield in the UK we have a National Videogame Museum:

https://thenvm.org/

Although I personally think you’ll get a better hands-on education somewhere like:

https://www.arcadeclub.co.uk/

> It’s a little more corporate than the museum in the article,

Seems like the UK has a rich history with video games as well! :D

I wish there was larger Venue for this kind of thing. I would like to see Commodores line of computers and it's games up for people to experience.

Just visited it yesterday - and here it is on the HN front page. :)

I was surprised to find out how they rely on modded consoles and presumably pirated ROMs. This just shows how much the emulation/modding scene means for video game preservation and how short-sighted corporations like Nintendo are, litigating and trying to shut down these efforts.

There's a great tour of the mueseum when it previously closed on Noclip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRAUO3v-Xkc

There's also the Pacific Pinball Museum not far away in Alameda.

https://www.pacificpinball.org

>“We don't think that it's enough just to preserve the artifacts. We believe that the artifacts should be used for something, which is to inspire the next generation,”

Using hardware might mean it breaks faster and some will be hard or impossible te repair. I don't think using is bad, but the more rare thing should be protected.

Is a thing locked behind glass truly any better than a collection of photos, videos, and 3D scans? Is there even any difference between a working unit and a broken one when you can't touch either?

Besides, if you're using something and it stops working it's much easier to find and fix the one thing that's broken than it is to repair the unit when you only touch it again twenty years later and a dozen components have degraded.

Video games are a uniquely interactive medium. They must be playable to be relevant.

Yea, I disagree. Video Game Hardware/Software is meant to be used. You preserve it by passing the experience on to the next generation.

If you're ever in the Dallas/Ft Worth area..

National Videogame Museum!

https://nvmusa.org

there are also several Free Play arcade locations (they restore & maintain the original hardware) along with Arcade 92 up in McKinney, TX.

Made has great classes for kids every Saturday; highly recommend.

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